So it finally happened. I deleted my Facebook account, because it was counterproductive to say the least. The stupid posts were about 99,9% of all of them, constantly reminding me that people are idiots. And all the distractions aside I can finally focus on what I wanted to do for a long time – writing more posts.
Being overworked is good sometimes, but it can also be a heavy burden when there’s simply too much stuff to handle. All of them for yesterday. Good thing is that we’re finishing some of our own big projects, so you’ll see a promo for them here soon.
Decentralized creation processes work the best. Chaotic ones with rigid rules lead to subpar final products. I guess it’s all about the right people being in the right place. Squash!
Never thought I’d fall into that trap, but on the first day I downloaded a couple of paid books, and spent hours on the couch reading. This is the future of reading that will exist alongside real books, but for travel and quick reads it’s just plain perfect. Bought the standard kindle 4 (no touch), because I already have a tablet and I hate audiobooks :)
It feels nice to be living in a world in which we have so many tools to deliver content. Sure most of the cheap HTML5 editors are for the Mac, but that will change sooner or later. The dominance of Adobe has never been threatened the way it is now by cheaper and efficient alternatives. The death of Flash and a whole range of tools for HTML5 will define the future of the web for years to come.
Image credit: I Love Design.com
It’s 2011, so saying that someone should update their website through editing HTML files (or as some people say “programming” ;)) sounds quite insane doesn’t it? Maybe so, but is the ease of updating worth the compromises on quality? Sure, some CMS driven sites can be pretty interesting, but it’s hard for them to have a distinct style, that doesn’t look like it’s a set of boxy templates. Apple’s website seems boxy at first, but it breaks most template rules by having each page look completely differently – as if it was designed for a fine printed book, and not through a set of CMS templates. Sure the main page is just a big banner with some smaller ones below, and that can be easily customizable through some backend, but once you get to any page it will look almost like it’s taken from a full-colour manual, rather than one-design-fits-all-template.
The point here is – should smaller websites (like a small hostel, a pet shop, a cafe) really use CMS, or go for something unique, creative and new. What I mean is that they should have each page designed as a separate website, using a set of overall rules, but even breaking the text in just the right place. Sure CMS is necessary for news sites, blogs and e-stores, but the internet itself is actually going into stagnation.
We had that Flash-explosion a few years ago where websites were made into all-flash-all-singing-all-dancing animated multimedia presentations, and that was fun … for a while. Then Flash started to recede towards HTML5 animation and simplicity. But the CMS underneath it all is I think what keeps the real creativity still in the box.
Maybe we should think about it – maybe the web after a few years of finding it’s way, is actually going back to imitating fine-printed books, magazines and brochures? Maybe the attention to every detail, every word and every image would lead us away from square thumbnails with “float: left;”, a small margin and justified text on their right side?
I sure hope so…
When Apple introduced the retina display, we found out that 960×640 pixels is a nice resolution for a small, 3.5 inch screen and decided to embrace it right away. The retina iPad didn’t come this year, so when designing for mobile devices we’re still lower than 1280 x 800 pixels, with the iPad being 1024×768.
Apparently though Toshiba is planning to change that and introduce a 498 ppi, 6″ screen sometime in the near future. I don’t really see a reason (maybe I’d have to see the screen live to notice if there’s any difference), but isn’t retina display about high enough ppi, so the eye can’t distinguish the pixels? So why making anything higher than 320/360 ppi at all? The only thing that comes to mind is – to be “better” than apple on billboards and in ads. Well if the trend catches on, or if the iPad gets retina display, we’ll be designing for mobile at 2,560 x 1,600, which is mind blowing because a couple of years ago that resolution wasn’t even in high end desktop computers (and it’s still rare in most desktops).
So what’s next?
That may actually lead to move digital design a little bit closer to print design – having a resolution that is almost pixel-independent and really looks like a fine print will encourage new ideas for design. Exciting times ahead!
Web 1.0 was all about creating content – articles, news topics, how to’s – you name it. Websites were hubs of information rather than a site with videos od a dog on a skateboard. Then the revolution came and the main focus on the web shifted from articles to people. Web 2.0 was all about being social online. And people loved it! Sure it’s counter-productive most of the time, but how convenient, right? You can now see updates and pictures of your “internet friends” from all over the world, and you don’t even need to meet with them for coffee to know what they’re up to.
Web 2.0 has generated an impressive amount of content and lured non-power-users into the internet. The amount of valuable content declined rapidly, and dogs on skateboards started to be the main focus online. Sure if you need information there’s wikipedia and wolfram alpha, which in fact is an answer to all the lazy people who can’t look up the answer themselves. So there’s more and more “social” content, more and more ads, but less quality content to browse through.
The answer? Well all those websites with funny pictures and subtitles encouraged people to at least write something under the pic. That’s creative sometimes, right? And then they share it with their average of 450 friends (who really has that many?) and it becomes another dog on a skateboard. Question sites are actually a true sign of change – people can ask about anything, and complete strangers may answer their question, which is then rated as the most valuable answer. That’s building a knowledge base right there. But when blogging shifted from serious articles towards “what I did last night with my facebook friends” I guess the last parts of web 1.0 died that evening. Facebook is trying to swallow some of that 1.0 juice by adding wikipedia answers to it’s searches, but seriously – who uses that?
Is internet eventually going to be about porn, shallow relationships with people and funny pictures only? What do you think?
When the web first started, all websites were just about presenting content. Or to be more precise – information. It was a simple, high contrast design, with white background, black text and blue, underlined links. It’s been many years since then, although I remember using a lot of these principles when building websites back in 1998. They were easy to read, and the lack of multimedia due to slower connections at the time, was in fact a blessing that let us fully appreciate content.
Now all of that has shifted towards shocking the user with jQuery animations, smooth scrolling, effects and gimmicks. I’ve been browsing through a lot of award winning websites – mostly portfolios for online companies – and I noticed that the amount of content they communicate now can be summarized in a few bullet-points. Surely if it’s purely about the design, it’s not a bad thing, but sometimes we really want to read more and don’t want to be treaded like idiots who can only comprehend ordered lists.
What do you think? Should we simplify the websites, relying more on bullets and eye-candy, or should we balance it better with longer pieces of text, that actually say something?
Surely everyone who has ever written a blog knows, that even with akismet and all those other fancy gizmos, spam is constantly there. It can be characterized as landfills and trash dumps of modern technology, that just keeps piling up and there’s always more. But stating the existence of spam nowadays is like saying we need air to breathe. Pointless. What I want to focus on is how spam comments are evolving to trick us into clicking approve.
Here’s some statistics:
Email spam is done by about 5 million botnets, that send 88% of all spam messages. 90% of spam is in English (that’s understandable) and 91% contains links. 66% is about pharmaceutical things like viagra,cialis etc. In 2010 alone 107 billion mails were sent, out of which 89,1% was spam. Good news is that the amount of spam is decreasing by about 1% each year. The biggest fall is in email spam, because of better filters, and people simply ignoring those messages after learning how they work. A lot of spam moved to blog comments though, either to move traffic to other websites, or increase google popularity. So what kinds of spam are there?
Praise spam
Praise spam is the most common one – everyone wants to hear compliments, and if we get a comment that says “great blog! I’ve bookmarked it!” or “Great writing style, keep it up!” or thins like:
Help offerings (mostly SEO)
That comes from the fact that most blogs are not popular. That’s how life works and we should learn to deal with it. So when we see a help offer: to boost our stats, to earn more money, whatever – we unintentionally take notice of that comment before realizing it is spam. Some people apparently don’t realize that, because the spam bots are still doing this.
Pointing out mistakes (that’s a new one)
If praise isn’t really your thing, maybe criticism is. Or maybe if a bot is smart enough (yeah, right!) to criticize you, then it’s not a bot, but a real comment you can approve? Silly them ;)
Total gibberish and idiomatic idiocy
Sometimes what we get is a string of words or phrases taken from books, randomized and weird. It looks like it’s some twisted, drug induced poetry and sometimes it is. I actually like this type of spam sometimes – especially when I can compile a couple of those into a song, that’s as deep lyrically as Radioheads gibberish ;) (I still like their music though)
We can learn to fight it or we can learn to ignore it. But we must be aware that bots are a considerable part of our reader base. So this post is a tribute to them. Thank you for visiting my site bots! ;)
Another (this time smaller) infographic about how much time and money is lost in the workplace due to an Angry Birds addiction. It actually is possible, that the yearly amount of wasted money is higher, than the value of it’s creators – Rovio. Now that’s mindblowing…
It’s hard to miss today’s big news about Steve Jobs’ passing. I won’t dive into monologues on how he changed my life and how he inspired me, because that’s what everyone does, and he doesn’t need more praise. Beside I wouldn’t be writing this if he didn’t inspire me, right? It’s better to start thinking what’s next, rather than re-living the past. Sure he’ll be remembered as he made a big dent in the world, but a more valid question for me is: does the style and passion end here for future CEO’s?
He was well known for his product presentations, in which he combined humor, passion and confidence, that were spreading among other people like wildfire. It’s not true, that Apple will cease to create great products, because they already know they need to focus together to match him in bright ideas and innovations and they will. It’s more a question of how they will do it. Right now there are no keynote speakers that match that passion and that drive. Sure Phil Schiller loves Apple products, and so does Tim Cook, but when they say how amazing they are, it seems like it’s pure marketing and no soul. Sorry, you can’t learn passion and that’s why Steve was one of a kind in the industry.
Hopefully people like him will emerge sometime soon, not necessarily in Apple, to change the world and become the new “crazies”.
Sure people can fool you with washed-up phrases like “there’s no I in TEAM” and such, but the truth in the design community is a little different. Actually the more people involved in a project, the more fragmented it will be. Think of it as an android headset, with all the resolutions, different processors and performance, and a design needs to now fit it all.
With iPhone’s it’s a bit easier – there’s the iPhone (sure, two resolutions, but that’s easy – just double) and you can create something for it actually being sure it will look and work the same. Well let’s not jump into that analogy too far, I hope you got it. The more people involved, the less stable the design is. Thus the best teams are usually the smallest.
Thinking about the successes of recent years in mobile apps and games, (well aside from Rovio) most of the biggest, most creative ideas came from small, 2-3 people teams. Sometimes it can even be a one person, and then the vision is completely as it was imagined from the beginning.
Is it even possible to create something good with a team larger than two people anymore? Well we just need to wait and see.
We have covered the alternatives to Adobe’s expensive suite many times yet, but since the release of Hype, there’s a lot more options for a web designer, to have an almost fully functional set of apps, for a fraction of the price. Sure, Pixelmator is not yet in 2.0 version, which will bring it even closer to Photoshop, but it’s gonna happen soon, and an improved type tool plus many other additions (vectors!) will make many people to seriously consider it. At 40$ it’s a steal. Same with vector designer – sure it’s simpler, but only a small percent of users (those alleged power-users) are actually taking advantage of all that illustrator has to offer. Most of us just want to design a logo quickly and efficiently. Another 40$ and it’s yours.
Flash is nearly gone from the web altogether (even Adobe now has it’s own HTML5 authoring tool), and Hype can do a lot of the things flash did, only with better battery/processor performance on mobile devices (that includes laptops). All of those Apps combined cost less than 150$. And sure they’re underpowered sometimes, and not as feature packed as their Adobe counterparts. But almost 80% of designers use the same tools all the time, the same filters and the same elements. Pixelmator is really close to being able to successfuly replace Photoshop, and both Vector Designer and Hype are constantly being improved as well. We may see a big split in the design community in a year or two, with Adobe loosing a lot of market share towards cheaper options.
I’ve been using those three apps alongside CS5, and I’m sure that I won’t buy the CS 6 update anytime soon. Monopoly is never a good thing, and it led Adobe to the high prices they have today.
A while back I considered the iPad to be nice timekilling tool, but not really a device to create content. Well maybe if you’re a writer and have a keyboard dock you can use it for work. But most other kinds of creative activities were out of the question since the apps were baby-apps, not too powerful and not too serious. That changed a while ago when apple released iMovie for iphone. Sure it’s not Final Cut, but it’s a start – you can be on a bus and edit a video you shot before. This opened up a lot of new possibilities, but it looked like that was about it. Photoshop for iOS is a big disappointment, because of it’s lack of serious tools and layers, and those painting apps, well , they’re for painters not designers.
Sure there’s iFontMaker which is pretty useful and can be considered productive. But yesterday garageband came into the spotlight, because frankly, this is an app in which you can actually do something. Just like iMovie. It’s not a time killer, because if you’re into music making it’s the first big app that doesn’t just let you play with some sounds but also records them and let’s you arrange them. This is big. Sure I can’t imagine a real photoshop or illustrator for mobile devices just yet, but who knows. It’d have to be stylus operated though and that doesn’t sit well with capacitive touch displays. And making a company logo with just your fingers is only good if it’s a logo for fingerpaint selling firm.
But finally we can do some music and that’s great. I can’t wait to see ableton and other bigger players make an approach at this. The new iPad is as capable as the computers from a while back if not better. So the only thing stopping the expansion is the user interface. It has to be redesigned and it has to be done good enough to allow some serious work. Exciting times!
State of mess is a typical thing for any designer. We see something we like on the web and we bookmark it for future reference. Then we can of course always access it later easily…
Yeah, right!
I have a gazillion of bookmarks and I have no idea what most of them are. Some are years old and I never checked them out again. But I found an app that instead of bookmarks, just snaps images, that you can tag and then find easily. The app is called “Little Snapper” and it simply snaps a screenshot of a website. Think of it as your screenshot catalogue. After a while the amount of images starts to grow, so it’s actually pretty cool to type in “minimal” and “white” to see all the matching sites and get some inspiration (but not too much, right? ;)).
It helped me plenty to keep a better track of what I see online and it also cleared most of my bookmarks that I’d never check anyway.